Media commentators and business analysts in the old industrial west are locked in combat. The “hawks”, who have, mostly but not entirely, a financial orientation, point to the upward creep of inflation indices in the UK and some European countries, including even Germany.

They also point with alarm to the central banks’ indulgence in quantitative easing, which they castigate as “printing money”.

One of the semi-hawks, Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank, has, however, tried to draw a distinction between official funds injected to safeguard the banking system and the overall stance of monetary policy. But he is in line with the fully fledged hawks in arguing for acting soon, before inflationary expectations have taken hold and the cost of a cure has become very much bigger.